The volume brings a kind of companion to the subject of study of archaeology and history of Late Mycenaean to Geometric Greece and of the koine of Early Iron Age Geometric styles in Europe and Upper Eurasia, ca 1300–700 BC, in relation to their Near Eastern neighbours. The age around the so-called axial period of human history, of transition from Bronze to Iron Age, from the pre-philosophical to philosophical mind, from mythical level of human thought to logos, is discussed in the frame of combining several approaches into a synthetic picture revisiting the previous books and papers by the author, in an attempt to combine the witness of archaeological sources with the worlds of Homer and Hesiod, and the first private Phoenician and Greek merchant ventures. It surveys the birth of Greek autonomous city states, of its art and its free citizens. The book contains many maps and drawings illustrating the discussed subjects, black and white and colour photographs.

William Brockliss, responding to George Lakoff's and Mark Johnson's analysis of metaphor, explores the Homeric poets' use of concrete concepts drawn from the Greek natural environment to aid their audiences' understanding of abstract concepts. In particular, he considers Homeric images associating flowers with deception, disorder, and death.

What does it mean to be a hero? The ancient Greeks who gave us Achilles and Odysseus had a very different understanding of the term than we do today. Based on the legendary Harvard course that Gregory Nagy has taught for well over thirty years, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours explores the roots of Western civilization and offers a masterclass in classical Greek literature. We meet the epic heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but Nagy also considers the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the songs of Sappho and Pindar, and the dialogues of Plato. Herodotus once said that to read Homer was to be a civilized person. To discover Nagy’s Homer is to be twice civilized. “Fascinating, often ingenious... A valuable synthesis of research finessed over thirty years.” —Times Literary Supplement “Nagy exuberantly reminds his readers that heroes—mortal strivers against fate, against monsters, and...against death itself—form the heart of Greek literature... [He brings] in every variation on the Greek hero, from the wily Theseus to the brawny Hercules to the ‘monolithic’ Achilles to the valiantly conflicted Oedipus.” —Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly

This book contains a collection of twenty-one essays in honour of Professor Franco Montanari by eminent specialists on Homer, ancient Homeric scholarship, and the reception of the Homeric Epics in both ancient and modern times. It covers a wide range of important subjects, including neoanalysis and oral poetry, the Doloneia, the Homeric scholia, the theoretical premises of Aristarchean scholarship, and Homer in Sappho, Pindar, Comedy, Plato, and Hellenistic Poetry. As a whole, the contributions demonstrate the vitality of modern scholarship on Homeric poetry.

This book is a study of the variable perceptions of Greek collective identity, discussing ancient categories such as blood- and mythically-related primordiality, language, religion, and culture. It considers complex middle grounds of intra-Hellenic perceptions, oppositional identities, and outsiders' views.

In the wake of recent advances in the treatment of longstanding problems pertaining to the interpretation of Homeric poetry, this volume brings together cutting-edge research from a cohort of acclaimed scholars on Homer and the Homeric Hymns. The variety of topics covered spans the entire field of Homeric philology: the methods and solutions provided for a new edition of the Odyssey, the puzzle of the relation between the festival of the Panathenaea and the Homeric text, the disclosure of the meaning of notorious cruces pertaining to arcane formulas, the two emblematic heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Achilles and Odysseus, Homeric poetics, the range and use of repetition in a traditional medium, the composition of the Homeric epics, the Apologoi and 'Cyclic' Narrative, as well as the Homeric Hymns to Hermes and Aphrodite.

Anna Bonifazi examines the evocative power of linguistic elements in the Homeric text--in particular, the use of αύ- adverbs and particles to signal upcoming content and the ambiguous use of pronouns to evoke the complexity of Odysseus' identity. She shows that, by deliberately merging distinct meanings, the text incorporates different viewpoints.